Finally taking time away from marten photography in Algonquin, we spent considerable time in the winter of 2016 trying to find red foxes – and our efforts were rewarded with some exceptional encounters. The one that produced this shot began with a 4am wake-up call and a long drive in the pre-dawn hours to the park from our apartment in Toronto. At sun up, our car told us the temperature was a frigid -34 Celcius and my double-gloved-yet-still-frozen hands agreed. We found a set of fox tracks heading into the woods and we followed them for a few hundred yards until we reached a clearing covered in knee-deep snow. Before us was not one, but two foxes – the vixen and one of the kits from last spring – digging up the remains of stashed snowshoe hare. Just as I set up my tripod and laid down in the icy snow, the foxes started to play, backlit by the rising sun. The moment lasted less than two minutes before they disappeared deeper into the forest, leaving me cold, wet, and with a massive smile, knowing I’d captured an intimate, natural moment between wild foxes. And this image not only freezes the memory, but stands as one of my favourites I’ve ever captured.